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The glorious fount of arcane energy known as the Sunwell empowered the high elves for millennia, until the death knightArthas laid siege to the elven kingdom and corrupted its sacred energies. Seeing no other alternative, a band of survivors led by Prince Kael'thas destroyed the ancient fount. Over time the surviving elves fell prey to a crippling magical withdrawal.

Now, promising salvation for his people, Kael'thas has returned. Soon the Sunwell will shine once again, but whether the sacred fount will usher in deliverance or destruction remains to be seen.

Blizzard Entertainment would like to dedicate the patch in memory of Gary Gygax. His work on D&D was an inspiration to us in many ways and helped spark our passion for creating games of our own. As avid D&D players and fellow game developers, we were all saddened by the news of his passing; we feel we’ve lost a true adventuring companion. Thanks for everything and farewell, Gary. You will be missed.

Kael'thas Sunstrider says: It was called the Sunwell! A sacred fount of untold power it saturated every fibre of our being in the warmth of its glow we thrived, until the shadow of death fell upon us. Only after the Sunwell's destruction did we realise how dependant we had become on its magic how much we needed to feed. In the wake of our devastation I named our people Sin'Dorei, Blood Elves, my people turned to me for answers. I promised them a cure, strangely we found deliverance in the demon Illidan. Illidan offered new sources of arcane power and so I joined him in Outland pledging to return one day to lead our people to glory! But Illidan's agenda was short sighted, I grew impatient. In secret I began harvesting what energies I could. I had a brief taste of true power before it was taken from me. But all is not lost the Sunwell's essence endured kept hidden by those who sought to protect it. Now I have returned with the knowledge that sacrifices must be made before we can reclaim our birthright. I have forged a new alliance. Soon the blessed rays of the Sunwell will shine once again, and usher into this world the one who will deliver us all

The combat log has undergone improvements that allow more robust combat text filtering including the ability to define custom colors for enemies and friends, as well as combat text filtering for self and others.

Characters will now retain talented spell ranks so when they retalent they do not have to relearn the spells from trainers.

Spell Haste: Spell haste now reduces the global cooldown on spells, down to a minimum of 1 second. This change does not apply to melee and ranged abilities.

Item Cast Spells: Many spells cast by items were being cast as if the caster were the same level as the item. Most of those will now be cast at the player's level, giving them a reasonable chance to miss, be dispelled, or be resisted.

Resilience: Now reduces the magnitude of mana draining effects by the same amount that it reduces critical strike damage. The Tooltip has been revised to reflect this.

Spirit-Based Mana Regeneration: This system has been adjusted so that as your intellect rises, you will regenerate more mana per point of spirit.

Weapon Skill: Points will be gained faster in weapon skills for levels 1 through 59.

Insect Swarm: Casting lower ranks of this spell is now properly penalized like other healing and damage effects.

Lacerate: This ability now deals additional damage based on the attack power of the Druid.

Lifebloom: The bonus coefficient on the final bloom effect has been reduced by 20%. This spell will no longer cause error messages when interacting with Spellsteal or while the Druid is under the effects of Mind Control.

Many shapeshift form tooltips have been updated to be consistent with each other.

Natural Perfection: This ability will no longer be triggered by taking critical strikes while sitting. In addition, it is now affected by the Subtlety talent and reduces damage by 2/3/4%, down from 1/3/5%.

Nurturing Instinct increases your healing spells by up to 50/100% of your Agility, and increases healing done to you by 10/20% while in Cat form.

Regrowth: The mana cost of this spell has been reduced by approximately 20%.

Mana Shield: This spell will now get a percentage of the Mage's bonus to spell damage as an additional effect.

New Talent: Molten Shields will cause your Fire Ward to have a 10/20% chance to reflect Fire spells while active. In addition, your Molten Armor has a 50/100% chance to affect ranged and spell attacks.

Permafrost: This talent will now correctly increase the movement slowing effect of frost Armor instead of the attack speed slowing effect.

Turn Undead(Rank 3):This spell has been reworked and has been renamed to “Turn Evil”. It will now work on Demons in addition to Undead. Turn Evil is subject to diminishing returns, and lasts 10 seconds in PvP.

Power Infusion: Infuses the target with power, increasing their spell haste by 20% and reducing the mana cost of all spells by 20%. Lasts for 15 seconds. This will not stack with other haste effects, such as Heroism, Bloodlust, or Icy Veins.

Power Word: Shield: Using low ranks of this spell will now be penalized the same way healing spells are penalized.

Prayer of Mending: This spell will now fade from players who leave or enter an instance, change continents, or exit the game.

Reflective Shield: The reflective damage from this talent no longer breaks crowd control effects which break on taking damage.

Shadowguard: No longer consumes the charge of Inner Focus when triggered.

Abilities that can be used while stealthed, without breaking stealth, can now be cast without breaking Vanish when used at the same time.

Cheat Death: A combat log message will now show when this ability activates and now has an animation. It will now almost always be accurate in displaying the amount of damage done to a rogue when under the effects of Cheat Death.

Sap mechanic changed from "Incapacitate" to "Sap". This will allow more humanoids that were previously immune to Sap to be vulnerable to Sap, but still immune to Gouge. Note that anything that removed Sap previously will still remove Sap after the change.

Vanish: This ability will no longer sometimes cause the UI to display Shadowmeld as active when it has been cancelled.

Shamanistic Rage is now a Physical ability instead of a Magic spell, and thus is no longer dispellable. It now reduces all damage taken by 30% and gives your successful melee attacks a chance to regenerate mana equal to 30% of your attack power. This lasts for 15 seconds with a 2 minute cooldown.

If a player dies 50 times or more in a battleground, they will no longer be worth honor for the remainder of that battle.

When you first enter a battleground, messages about other players joining the battleground will be linked together for the first minute. You will see a message in AV like "28 players joined" rather than a line for each player that joined. After the first minute, it will work as it always has. In addition, all of the messages about other players leaving the battleground and getting marks of honor once the battleground is complete have been removed.

Battleground Rune Buffs: Speed, Restoration, and Berserking buffs received from battleground runes will no longer cause Stealth or Prowl to break.

[Broiled Bloodfin] now increases resistances to all schools of magic instead of increasing Stamina and Spirit.

New recipes, [Charred Bear Kabobs] and [Juicy Bear Burgers], can be purchased from either Bale or Malygen in Felwood. These recipes requires 250 skill to learn, and are created from meat found on level 48-56 bears. This will aid players in leveling up their cooking skill to 300 without fishing.

The stun caused by engineering Bombs and Grenades is now considered an Incapacitate effect and uses the appropriate Incapacitate diminishing returns. Bomb and Grenades can now inflict damage to targets immune to Stun and Incapacitate effects.

Players can now turn in one of each battleground mark for an honor reward. The questgivers for this turn-in are the Horde Warbringer and the Alliance Brigadier General and can be found near the battlemasters in the capital cities.

Dungeon and Group Quest Experience: The amount of experience awarded for dungeon and 5-person group quests in Outland has been increased in almost all cases.

[Idol of the Raven Goddess]: The bonus healing, critical strike rating, and spell critical strike rating from this item have been increased. In addition, it no longer sometimes fails to apply the healing bonus.

[Libram of Mending]: The mana regeneration buff has had its duration increased. The name of the buff granted by this item changed to Grace of the Naaru to avoid having the same name as the Light's Grace talent.

[Masterwork Stormhammer]: The Chain Lightning cast by this item will no longer jump to secondary targets which are under the effect of crowd-control spells that break on taking damage. i.e. Polymorph, Sap, etc.

[Mojo]: A pvp-flagged player can no longer kiss Mojo and cause non-flagged players to become flagged.

[Thunderstrike]: The Chain Lightning cast by this item will no longer jump to secondary targets which are under the effect of crowd-control spells that break on taking damage. i.e. Polymorph, Sap, etc.

The Interface Options screen has been completely redesigned. AddOns that interact with the Interface Options screen will need to be updated.

Players will now be able to inspect other players via their chat link. (Must still be in range)

Players may now inspect players of the opposing faction while they are not flagged for PvP.

Combat Log Improvements

New tabs are available for sorting combat messages.

ctrl-right clicking functionality has been added for individual information sorting

Colors may now be assigned for friends and enemies

The WoWCombatLog.txt file format has been changed to make it easier for programs to read.

The ability to chat-link player spells and talents.

Cast sequences work with slot numbers again.

GM messages now appear with a Blizzard icon near their name.

You can now declare war on a faction in the reputation UI while you are in combat.

Spell haste and Armor Penetration will now display on the character sheet. (Armor Penetration displays in the hit rating section). Spell Penetration now displays under the spell hit section.

Weapon enchants are now shown at the character selection screen.

The friends list now has a notes field per friend. Click on the note icon to add a note for a particular friend.

There is now a UI option to display free bag space. When turned on, your backpack will display the total number of free spaces available in all your bags.

You can now link quests into the chat log by Shift-Clicking on the quest name in the quest log.

Merchants now display how many pages of merchandise they sell (Page 1 of 2).

Guild Bank Changes

Ranks can now be set to allow withdraw of funds or allow repair with funds or both.

When purchasing a bank tab, it takes money out of the guild bank before it takes your personal money. This is logged as well.

Each Tab now has an info pane. This pane can be used for requests or for rules about the tab or anything at all really.

When looting Bind on Pickup items, the confirmation dialogue now lists the name of the item in the dialogue. You can now verify that you are picking up the correct bind on pickup item.

Bind on Pickup items that only you can pick up (Heroic Badges for instance) will no longer bring up a confirmation dialogue.

Players can now opt out of looting for group loot, round robin and need before greed looting styles. If a player turns this on, they will not get a looting turn in the loot cycle. This can be turned on from the right-click menu on your own portrait.

In Master Loot mode, all players in the group will see sparkles on corpses that have loot above the master loot threshold. This lets everyone see what the master loot items are, though they cannot interact with them. Only the master looter can loot those items still.

Searching for an item in the tradeskill search box should now hide empty categories.

The names over the heads of nearby players who are on your friends list will appear in a different color now so you can tell when they are nearby.

Stacked items for sale at the auction house now display the per unit price and per unit buyout price in the item mouseover.

The profession UI search field has been improved and now allows for searching of more types of things. For instance you can search for items by socket color, by effect ("Critical Strike" for instance) or search gems by their effect ("Strength" for instance). In addition, the searching of items by level has been made more intuitive. You can now search for items by level with "15-20" to search for items that you can make that have a minimum level required of 15 to 20.

The Tooltip for player Dodge/Block/Parry in the character sheet has been changed slightly.